Microsoft responds to YouTube demands, 'more than happy' to include ads

This is a really interesting battle of platform vs proprietary business going on here. Is Youtube a platform? If so, then it should be offered to everyone equally. That's almost the definition of a platform. But is it actually a proprietary business that operates purely in the interests of its owner? In that case it should be offered to whoever makes money for the owner. If you are a content creator, Youtube tries very hard to look like a platform. But if you are a business that wants to make money from showing the content - Youtube looks like a proprietary business.

Lots of companies are trying to have it both ways these days. Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google too - all want to say, "hey, here we have a platform, you can come and develop here and make money without prejudice". But at the same time they all want to say, "we make the rules, we decide who wins, who loses and who's in and who's out and have no obligation to be fair about it".

Once upon a time people screamed murder when a platform company started weaving its own interests directly into its platform. For example, Microsoft would get heavily criticised for using "secret" windows APIs in office. Not that they didn't. But there was a general consensus that it was highly unfair for MS to have access to APIs that others didn't.

These days this resistance has been broken down by companies like Apple and Facebook, offering incredibly attractive "platforms" but without the guarantees that a platform used to have. Would anybody complain now that Apple uses a private API on the iPhone that 3rd party developers don't have access to? These days people virtually insist on it, for security, if nothing else.

So to me this is one more aspect of this long and winding battle between companies that want to have it all - pretend to offer "open" platforms but keep the reigns under their control. And they are all guilty.

Sweet mother of god, what a move to pull. Well played. Looks like Microsoft is pulling the same hand, as Google did with EAS some months ago. Also considering MS has been asking for Google's help since 2010. Brilliantly done.

I've been off all microsoft products for a long time, but I think I might be willing to give their phone a try. I'm not completely sold on android or apple at the moment, and Msoft's design does seem to be taking the lead (flat ui), and presenting a different option . Plus, before the android/ios wars, I always thought Nokia made the most brilliant phones, and i'm kinda glad to see them back in the game.

Perfect example of stacking the deck in your favour. If Google says no, they look like hypocrites who aren't practising what they preach. Very gutsy move Microsoft, well played.

Can google selectively pick which partners will get access to their service?

I want to understand the legal answer and the ethical answer.

Isn't Microsoft released an ad(scroogled) some days ago attacking Google that they track users. So now Microsoft doesn't have any problem if Google track Microsoft users.

What an irony !

What a move... now if this only worked on movie companies.

Host a bunch of infringing works, and when the takedown notice come, say that you are "more than happy" to pay license fee. The only thing one need is to get the same access and license deal that netflix got. Anything else would be unfair.

It's quite likely that they're only "more than happy" to include advertising if they can also reap some profits from the ads shown to their "mutual customers". (Why else would you word it that way?)

From Google's About page:

"Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Last time when Google was intentionally blocking Google maps and then deprecated ActiveSync on Windows Phone someone suggested Google should updated it to the following:(which seems quite true given how much of the world's crowdsourced video content is on YouTube):

"Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, except on Windows Phone".

Also, I see this post being flagged a lot, stay classy, Google fans on HN.

Looks like this submission is getting flagged as well. I guess this story really isn't showing Google is good light if Google fans are in such heavy damage control mode. It looks like they have a veto on what appears on the HN front page.

Look, you may not like Microsoft and even its response but why try to bury a legitimate news item? Are there not enough Google I/O posts related stories topping the the front page?

Can anyone who flagged this and the other related stories come out and tell us why they feel the need to abuse their moderator privileges?

From the HN guidelines:

"If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.)"

Looks like PG didn't guess that people with good karma will want to abuse it to bury stories they don't want others to see in such a constant way.

Discussion of Google's takedown notice is here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5715168